This first event of OPEN 2019 covers the ideas behind The DNA of Collaboration and Harmonious Working Patterns to explore ideas which might help all the people, communities and organisations working on creating a new, decentralised, regenerative economy collaborate better to produce more impact.

Panelists:

• Indra Adnan from The Alternative
• Nathan Schneider from the Platform Cooperativism Consortium
• Matthew Schutte from Holochain
• Laura James from Cambridge Computer Laboratory
• Josh Fairhead, author of Harmonious Working Patterns
• Oliver Sylvester-Bradley from The Open Co-op

Follow along with the chat below the video and dig deeper – there are some valuable links to other articles on catalysing collaboration and related subjects.

Notes from the chat during the discussion:

16:47:37 Nenad Maljković : Interesting article in this context (4 minute read), for later, of course  https://medium.com/enspiral-tales/a-trickle-becomes-a-river-64893418a769
16:52:47 Trevor: Economies of scale and division of labour
Nenad Maljković : This makes very much sense from the permaculture (and living systeems) point of view!
16:57:37 From vivian : To me it sounds more like an argument for free markets, coming from the right of the political spectrum. the first is all about lots of autonomous utility-maximising agents (in an economic jungle) with no overall purpose
16:57:55 From vivian : Some of the interactions in a forest are pretty brutal!
16:59:13 From Nenad Maljković : Any group of humans is complex, adaptive system.
16:59:43 From vivian : Yes but many groups have a “purpose” and can plan together. That’s inherent in a democracy
17:00:53 From Dil Green : Forest participants and humans are different – because humans will always have some conceptually stated purpose (unless they are a zen master).
17:01:01 From Nenad Maljković : Vision, purpose… obsolete in groups that collaborate based on intrinsic values (first hand experience with transition town initiatives on the ground – they don’t waste time on defining purpose or vision
17:01:55 From Dil Green : For me, forests are fine (great!) in and of themselves – because the participants don’t have conceptual approaches.
17:02:40 From Nenad Maljković : For me (with permaculture glasses on) there is coordination >>> cooperation >>> collaboration succesion
17:02:51 From vivian : For me, defining purpose and vision are the most powerful democratic things to do in an organisation. In my experience, in groups where there is nothing like this going on, there’s usually one person or a small group in charge. Others might accept this for a time but it usually breaks down/
17:02:54 From Dil Green : It’s when humans try to act like forests that things get strange – because concepts cannot capture complexity – and complex relationships are what makes forests capable of building carrying capacity.
17:04:34 From Nenad Maljković : @vivian: group / team / organisatiom / network / “platform” / “ecosystem”… all are human systems, but different.
17:08:29 From Nenad Maljković : Oh… that’s not “community”…
17:09:11 From Ben Roberts : Re “Telegram hell:” “The small group is the unit of transformation” Peter Block
17:09:24 From Dil Green : @Nathan blockchain people obvs didn’t read the ‘Tyranny of Structurelessness’ in time…
17:09:58 From Dil Green : @ben nice distillation.
17:10:58 From Dil Green : Drawing appropriate boundaries and understanding that boundaries are spaces of exchange rather than barriers seems key.
17:15:40 From Nathan to All Panelists : @dil Actually at the meeting I was describing they were referencing “The Tyranny of Structureless” to describe their condition.
17:15:47 From Nathan to All Panelists :
17:16:03 From Ben Roberts : If we were sitting together, Matthew wouldn’t be on his phone like that!
17:16:17 From Nenad Maljković : Of course not – any mediated communication is 2nd grade communication… or worse
17:16:40 From Ben Roberts : And I wouldn’t also be working on a Google doc.
17:17:06 From Nenad Maljković : Focus Ben, focus!
17:17:13 From Simon to All Panelists : You think so ! ?
17:17:18 From Dil Green : https://medium.com/@joshafairhead/harmonious-working-patterns-2788d1523106
17:17:24 From Nathan to All Panelists : At the very least distract yourself with FLO software!
17:18:13 From Oliver Sylvester-Bradley : Harmonious Working Patterns: https://medium.com/@joshafairhead/harmonious-working-patterns-2788d1523106
17:19:03 From vivian : @Indra I like your analysis of how people interact with ideologies and the connection you make with concepts of identity. In the present political situation we have a classic case study of how people with insecure identities cleave to apparently powerful “ready-made” ones which are really crude vehicles for manipulation and control.
17:20:21 From Nenad Maljković : Hear, hear… (coming from an oralist)
17:20:50 From vivian : Arguably many externally-defined forms of identity (countries, brands for example) fall to a greater or lesser extent into this category.
17:21:31 From Dil Green : @Vivian Agreed
17:21:44 From Nenad Maljković : By the way, some good practical tips on… collaboration… here (there’s also part 2): https://medium.com/the-tuning-fork/hierarchy-is-not-the-problem-892610f5d9c0
17:22:06 From Nathan to All Panelists : I love that article, @Nanad. Thanks for sharing it.
17:22:06 From Dil Green : @Nenad – great stuff.
17:22:33 From Nathan to All Panelists : A corollary of mine: https://medium.com/medlab/co-ops-need-leaders-too-c78a303cd16ea
17:22:49 From Oliver Sylvester-Bradley : Thanks!
17:22:58 From Nathan to All Panelists : Sorry https://medium.com/medlab/co-ops-need-leaders-too-c78a303cd16e
17:23:19 From Dil Green : Rich and Nat capture something that panellists here are not talking about – which is scale. ‘How many people in the group?’ ‘What is the right size of group for this intent?” seem to me to be very important early questions.
17:25:38 From Nenad Maljković : What Matthew describes is how things work anyway… We are all associated – as individuals – with more then one “organisation”, etc.
17:26:50 From Dil Green : @Nen – I think he is saying that the protocols for collaboration in those forms of org are over-conditioned by the learned cultural modes of top-down hierarchy.
17:27:06 From Oliver Sylvester-Bradley : Cohesion – steer towards average position of neighbours
Separation – avoid crowding neighbours
Alignment – steer towards average heading of neighbours
17:27:13 From Oliver Sylvester-Bradley : https://open.coop/2019/03/07/defining-dna-collaboration/
17:27:23 From Simon to All Panelists : Is this aimed at corporations . . . who pay fat consultancy fees?. Personally can’t we just close them down?
17:27:37 From Ben Roberts : Never mind the GHG emissions associated with in-person meetings!
17:27:40 From Oliver Sylvester-Bradley : lol!
17:28:31 From Nenad Maljković : Extroverts and introverts keep their differences on video too
17:28:56 From vivian : @laura vulnerability is strength! (although I’m conscious I’m just sending text messages and you’re the one on the video! )
17:30:04 From Ben Roberts : So interesting to hear Laura say she “hates video.” The three ways of connecting–in-person, live virtual (video/audio), and asynch/text– each have benefits and limits, and each appeal/repel different people in different ways. Deep collaboration will leverage all three and have them synergize in ways we are still just starting to figure out.
17:30:21 From Ben Roberts : Yay NEC!
17:33:56 From Nathan to All Panelists : Thank you Laura for sharing that.
17:34:59 From Nenad Maljković : If viewer is focused enough on video listening can be as good – it’s a skill to acquire, in my experience.
17:35:20 From Laura James : Great point Indra about tech privilege. Virtual environments, especially without video, can be empowering for people with disabilities whose voices are not heard in the same way in face to face meetings. For scale we need to centre inclusivity
17:35:25 From Nenad Maljković : Live video is not the same thing as watching TV
17:35:29 From Nathan to All Panelists : One board I’m on requires members to stay unmuted on calls to enforce attention.
17:37:59 From Nenad Maljković : @laura: yes, fully agree + what Ben Roberts wrote above: “The three ways of connecting–in-person, live virtual (video/audio), and asynch/text– each have benefits and limits, and each appeal/repel different people in different ways. Deep collaboration will leverage all three and have them synergize in ways we are still just starting to figure out.”
17:41:34 From Nenad Maljković : Voting is out of date. We use consent decision-making (not even consensus, that’s also out of date).
17:44:57 From Nenad Maljković : Re. foking in collaboration – doable even without devices!
17:45:57 From Dil Green : imho democratic tools have appropriate and inappropriate contexts. So that voting can have its place (a quick workplace decision among 50 people as to a wildcat strike), consensus can have its place (a group of three choosing where to go for a meal), deliberative democracy… and so on.
17:49:40 From Nenad Maljković : @laura: thanks for sharing this, very useful!
17:50:49 From Matthew Schutte : Gregory Bateson’s critique of Conscious Purpose:
17:50:50 From Matthew Schutte : http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/Gregory_Bateson.pdf
17:51:49 From Matthew Schutte : And published yesterday: Gregory’s daughter, Nora Bateson’s article on “Tasting Textures of Communication in Warm Data”
17:51:49 From Matthew Schutte : https://medium.com/@norabateson/eating-sand-e478a48574a5
17:53:54 From Matthew Schutte : Nora’s wonderful recent 8 minute video that touches on the challenge that humanity faces today and the different ways of THINKING that may be required to actually surface solutions:
17:53:55 From Matthew Schutte : https://vimeo.com/310626097
17:55:20 From Nathan : Join us later! https://ethicaledtech.info/wiki/Meta:Inaugural_Edit-a-Thon
17:57:49 From Wes, Somerset UK to All Panelists : Really great session, thank you everyone!
17:59:13 From Dil Green : These ‘names’ are nicely captured by the concept of ‘patterns’ – identified recurring conditions in complex systems which are recognisable – although each instance is unique (in space and time), we can nevertheless useful name them.
17:59:49 From Ben Roberts : I’m not with you fully, @matthew. Sure, you can note how any boundary is permeable, or even arbitrary. And yet collectives DO exist in nature and are essential building blocks for its complex capacities for collaboration.
17:59:57 From Dil Green : Pattern languages allow us to trace systems of relationship between patterns that embody the complexity of the interactions.
18:00:13 From Simon to All Panelists : Interesting that Oliver insisted that everyone start by explaining ‘how they make a living’, & that Matthew lived in his car. Progress will be made when we don’t have to make these ridiculous choices. What will that take?
18:00:28 From Ben Roberts : It’s not just about giving something a “name.”
18:02:11 From Dil Green : @ben agreed – understanding a pattern and being able safely to interact with it design it requires a great deal of investigation, learning, documenting, mapping connections to larger and smaller contexts…
18:06:08 From Nenad Maljković : “Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.”
– Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, 1977
18:07:00 From Nenad Maljković : Might work in similar way in social systems… I think.
18:07:47 From Dil Green : Thank you Nenad! Chris alexander student/practitioner here.
18:08:38 From Ben Roberts : Here’s a pattern language for group engagement that I love to use in various ways: https://groupworksdeck.org/
18:09:00 From Dil Green : I am working on building pattern language authoring tools for all sorts of domains.
18:09:47 From Ben Roberts : There’s a new pattern language for “Wise Democracy” too: https://www.wd-pl.com/
18:10:58 From Dil Green : know the group works one, but nice to have this democracy one. Thanks
18:11:08 From Matthew Schutte : An interesting blogpost on Dyads and Triads (similar to some of Josh’s comments) by the co-creator of SSL the most widely used security protocol on earth:
18:11:08 From Matthew Schutte : http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2013/04/dyads-triads-the-smallest-teams.html
18:11:14 From Ben Roberts : One of its categories is Collaboration
18:11:29 From Ben Roberts : I can speak to one version of an answer to Nenad
18:12:11 From Ben Roberts : Cooperation is another C word to include
18:16:52 From Ben Roberts : I can also answer Nenad’s question re the various C-words with a story about what we’ve learned in the Thriving Resilient Communities Collaboratory
18:20:13 From Nenad Maljković to All Panelists : Maybe give Ben a chance to answer my question?
18:20:14 From Matthew Schutte : Yes! We need to give ourselves and one another AUTHORIZATION to show up as full humans — with the complexity of other contexts — not just as our “role” in the organization!
18:20:53 From Matthew Schutte : Nora Bateson has designed a wonderful process called a WARM DATA LAB to foster this kind of experience — and result in transformative shifts.
18:21:57 From Ben Roberts : I’m eager to try a warm data lab with Nora using Zoom (and maybe some asynch tools and perhaps even a network of in-person groups too).
18:22:28 From Matthew Schutte : Nora spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco yesterday. That recording should be on NPR radio stations around the US (and elsewhere soon) and will probably be available online in the next few days:
18:22:29 From Matthew Schutte : https://www.commonwealthclub.org/videos
18:25:10 From Dil Green : Ben this is fascinating – thank you.
18:26:10 From Nenad Maljković : Thank you Ben!
18:26:14 From Dil Green : Is this documented / described anywhere?
18:26:25 From Indra : share your links Ben?
18:26:25 From Ben Roberts : www.thrivingresilience.org
18:26:27 From vivian : Thank you Oli!
18:26:32 From Dil Green : thanks!
18:26:51 From Nenad Maljković : Thank you all + Oliver and Dil
18:27:04 From Trevor : Thanks everyone!

The post Catalysing collaboration at scale appeared first on P2P Foundation.

That may have made it sound complicated, but it’s fairly simple. In a large group of cattle, if something startles a few of them, and they react suddenly startling others, then this pattern repeats, then you get a stampede.

Proof-of-Work or Proof-of-Stake both Centralize Power and Wealth

In Proof-of-Work, if you have more money to buy more computing power, then you can perform more hashes so that you earn more money than others, which lets you invest in more computing power, and so on.

In Proof-of-Stake, if you have more money to put at stake for your computed answers, you win more of the stakes, which lets you invest more stake, to win more stakes, and so on.

Make no mistake about it, in both cases, the rich get richer. Those with the power amplify their power.

Proof-of-Stake may solve the problem of wasting .3% of the planet’s electricity churning hashes, but it is exactly the same kind of positive feedback loop as Proof-of-Work.

If someone tells you they’re building a “decentralized” system, and it runs a consensus algorithm configured to give the people with wealth or power more wealth and power, you may as well call bullshit and walk away.

That is what nobody seems willing to see about blockchain.

In less than 10 years, bitcoin issuance and holdings became more centralized than dollars. . We get to the same imbalances faster

Positive feedback loops do happen in nature, but they typically have boundary conditions which act as a guardrail — a way to break the cycle so that it doesn’t spiral into dangerous imbalance. But what is the limit to people’s greed? Do you see any realistic way to break this cycle other than collapse of the currency itself?

A viable alternative: This is why we’ve built Holochain — a scalable and healthy alternative to blockchain based on nature’s design patterns for operating on large scales.

Reposted from Medium: https://medium.com/holochain/blockchain-blind-spots-1904d490218d

.Photo by abbyladybug

The post On the blind spots of the Blockchain appeared first on P2P Foundation.

A year ago, when we proposed an ideological map of the movements emerging on the Internet, we laid out two axes: abundance–degrowth and centralized-distributed. Debate arose around bitcoin and currencies and services based on blockchain, because we placed those who bet on them closer to the origin, closer to centralization, than those who bet on pure distributed structures of servers like GNU Social.

The argument was simple: the growing dependence of the blockchain system on “miners” not only tended to make the stability of bitcoin and its derivatives dependent on a limited and shrinking number of agents, but over the long term, they could change the rules of the game.

In January, a similar argument by one of the main developers of Bitcoin started a global debate, and in a few months, all kinds of headlines appeared about “the collapse of bitcoin” just as we were hearing declarations of love for the blockchain from Davos.

But this week, as shown by public data, the general situation became dire: two Chinese “mines,” Antpool and DiscusFish/F2Pool, have more than half of all blocks created. With free electricity and calculating power, they already have the capacity to modify the rules to their liking. Why should we trust them any more than any other centralizer, like Google, Facebook or Twitter?

The problem is one of design: dependence on mining, an industrial activity based on the availability of infrastructure, puts any blockchain product in the custody of whoever manages to attract large-scale capital.

Davos, the great forum of overscaled capital, wasn’t so wrong. Nor were the “misfits and millionaires who wanted to reinvent money.” Bitcoin and blockchain are systems that, in the end, serve the logic of the large scale. Their own structure eliminates control/capture by central banks, and replaces it with the possibility of capture by those large masses of capital that that can’t find a place these days. If there’s already little democratic control over central banks by political representatives or the market, what can we expect from a couple of anonymous Chinese millionaires? Should we hope for them to be replaced by their still larger colleagues on Wall Street or in London?

PS. If anyone thought that blockchain could be the basis for a “redesign of money,” just today, some interesting news came out: the US Federal Reserve is prepared to globally regulate products based on blockchain which, as the interest coming out of Davos confirms, are created to centralize.

Translated by Steve Herrick from the original (in Spanish).

The post The Big Lie About Bitcoin appeared first on P2P Foundation.

PAVEMENTS AND HIERARCHY

Architecture has in the past felt a need for pavements that are either patterned, or that embody figurative art. Our perception of space is founded on a connection with the ground via design. In creating an artificial built environment to house themselves and their activities, human beings have always been careful to connect with the ground visually. Methods that connect a pedestrian to the floor, whether inside a building, or in an open space outside include pavements, tilings, textures, mosaics, etc. A pioneering study of interior pavements has been undertaken by Kim Williams [13]. The authors are in complete agreement with Williams that pavements are central to mankind’s architectural — and intellectual –development. Most twentieth century pavements are plain and empty, arguing the case that there is no functional need for either representation or pattern in a pavement. We will argue the contrary: that pavements can serve the crucial function of connecting an observer to all surrounding structures. The connection becomes necessary for larger spaces, so this effect is most dramatic in external pavements.

From Stora Nygatan, Stockholm

Everyday experience — which calls upon visual scales between 1mm and 1m contained in the human body — serves as the foundation for any fractal design hierarchy. We connect visually and psychologically to an area surrounding our feet. This region defines the first fractal scales in a pavement design, and these external scales become linked to internal scales within our consciousness. Without a deliberate design here, there is a chance that no connection will be experienced. Regardless of the smallest unit employed, whether it be a piece of mosaic, a brick, or a tile, contrast should be used to identify the smallest scale unambiguously. Nevertheless, most urban plazas, and indeed, brick and stone walls of all kinds built in the twentieth century, disguise the smallest scale by repeating a single unit monotonously (e.g., so-called bonded brickwork, which creates a uniform surface).

Spatial coherence requires internal definition on successively larger scales, going up to the size of the entire region. A patterned expanse needs to define several distinct scales to create hierarchical linking. Therefore, while a detailed pattern might connect to the user at the smallest scale, simply repeating the design indefinitely without using intermediate scales will fail to connect the user to the larger space. Successful pavement designs contain similar but not identical regions. An urban space lacking a hierarchical linking can never connect to surrounding buildings at a distance because the jump in scale is simply too large. For this to happen, the buildings must define an additional, larger scale in the same hierarchy. It is therefore necessary for the pavement texture, color, and design to harmonize with the surrounding structures. Similarity between the pavement and buildings relates the scales.

THE IMPORTANCE OF MEANING STRUCTURES IN THE FLOORING OF URBAN SPACE

One of us has already discussed the properties of urban space, and how patterned flooring helps to define it. Commenting on contemporary examples, we said [14] (page 44):

Sidewalks, city streets, and street corners

An incredible opportunity to connect the pedestrian to the pavement has been missed all around the world, by using plain, featureless surfaces (even with expensive materials). The standard concrete sidewalk contains no visual information, and anyway, it is far too narrow. Even when brick is used for paving, perceivable patterns are usually avoided. Yet, patterns on the surface of pedestrian paths can make a great difference. Recall, for instance, all the wonderful mosaic and tiled pavements of the Roman world. Among notable historical examples are the pavement of the Piazza San Marco, and the Portuguese architectural tradition of lively sidewalk designs. Some of the most famous modern patterned sidewalks are in Brazil, a former Portuguese colony.

The design of flooring, as in an open plaza, has to obey the same principles as other, time-honored designs, such as oriental carpets. Methods for connecting different scales are outlined in a model of complexity by one of the authors [15]. The basic mechanism for linking among units separated either by distance or by scale is similarity in texture, color, and form. Similarity works via translational, rotational, reflectional, and scaling symmetries in the plane [16]. This is known by all sensitive artists trying to establish visual and emotional harmony. The coordination responsible for the visual coherence of the whole requires complex ordering, but not simplistic alignment. Symmetric arrangements on a plan do not connect elements across scales.

Stortorget in Gamla stan, Stockholm

Great urban spaces were built before the twentieth century, before the wholesale replacement of traditional design criteria. Discarding techniques for connecting human beings to the built environment developed over the previous several millennia, architects now follow a design philosophy that values an emotionally uncomfortable novelty, and which disconnects people from surrounding surfaces [14]. It is therefore a welcome surprise to see successful contemporary plazas built by the British artist and urban designer Tess Jaray [17]. One sees in her designs a well-defined smallest scale; distinct yet connected designs on different scales; and careful harmonization with the surrounding buildings [17]. This paper tries to analyze why her designs are so successful, using the fractal encoding model outlined above. Jaray’s pavements provide a satisfactory experience on a number of different scales.

From the informational point of view, an open plaza offers vastly decreased input from surrounding walls compared with a totally enclosed, roofed space. It is therefore critical to connect to the ground via geometry. Thus, the most expressive pavements are to be found in public open spaces around the world. When successful — as in the case of Tess Jaray’s pavements — they connect the pedestrian to the ground, and thereby permit the psychological freedom to be alive and move around. This is what determines the success of an open space independently of other factors such as exposure, surrounding façades, and density of cross-paths.

CONNECTION ESTABLISHES A PHYSIOLOGICAL STATE

We postulate that the intensity of fractal connection corresponds directly to the degree that human beings intuitively feel a space or design to be meaningful or “alive”. This model therefore identifies the visual connection of designs and structures with a viewer’s emotional state. It is becoming increasingly clear from neurophysiological research that the human conceptual system and the possible forms of reasoning are limited by the wiring of our brains [12]. Moreover, mental activity turns out to be emotionally engaged; i.e, it is likely that we actually feel our thoughts [12].

There exist subconscious processes going on inside our brains, which probably encompass the fractal connections discussed above. Our model of fractal encoding helps explain why we feel emotionally elated standing in a great historical plaza which is paved with some design that harmonizes with surrounding buildings. If all components work to connect and harmonize, we become an integral component of an enormous space because we link hierarchically with it. This could represent one of the greatest architectural-aesthetic experiences for an observer.

The corollary is also of interest. Urban spaces that conform to the contemporary design canon tend to be dead, because they fail to establish a positive emotional connection with the user. One can argue that this effect is not unintentional. A person feels ill-at-ease in such places, and consequently avoids them. This is not simply a matter of choice; as proposed in this paper, non-fractal structures clash with our perceptive process. Not only is our environment thereby impoverished, but the design rules that generate such environments deny and suppress fractal connections. We now have a widely-embraced design philosophy that ignores the need to create structures that elicit a sense that we are in a meaningful place, thereby severely narrowing the range of our emotional experience.

A positive emotional connection with the user

The environment is not separate from us, offering only objects and external sensations that we encounter: it is part of our being [12]. A balanced, healthy mental state requires an understanding of nature that is linked to our human emotions. The mind is much more than a computer; it is also passionate. How are we to understand our sense of belonging to a larger whole? In this paper, we have discussed the experience of meaning from the environment, yet our explanation is limited compared to what is described very well in mystical and spiritual literature. Connecting to a larger, all-encompassing whole can lead to ecstatic participation, or a spiritual experience. Such a state has frequently been described as transcendence.

THE NATURE OF MEANING

We wish to concentrate on the perception of meaning coming out of visual complexity in the environment. Visual information presented as a coherent image or coded pattern is accessible in a direct manner. There is a mapping function between structures in the world and structures in the mind. When the mapping is faithful to the hierarchical linking (i.e., it preserves the information and its interconnections rather than any overall form), it creates an experience of meaning. Neural structures use information on connectivity to create meaning as an internal state: in our model, meaning is not assigned to external forms. The degree of conformal fit or coherence determines the strength of the sense of meaning and also the strength of the emotional experience. In its simplest aspect, meaning corresponds to a valence in emotion, which is either positive or negative. When two or more meaningful structures are linked together in a meaningful way, we begin to build a system of beliefs.

If an image is incoherent, then the information it contains cannot be perceived easily as a whole. There is less meaning because, even though there may be considerable information there, the information is difficult to synthesize. This in turn generates a negative valence which is manifested in negative emotions. Viewers are more receptive to information that is presented in a pattern that is strongly connected to them. Information structured in this way is typically called “natural” or “intuitive”. One of us has previously argued that intuition is actually a process involving reasoning with structure [18]. By contrast, a viewer will not be receptive to information that is presented via a visual pattern (or lack thereof) that fails to establish a strong connection with the viewer. We believe that environmental structures need to be fractal to satisfy the human brain.

Our sense of understanding arises from the way we form conceptual structures in the mind. When a collection of ideas has coherence and a sense of relatedness among its elements, we perceive its structure. When we perceive the structure of thoughts and ideas as a coherent whole, we conclude that they are correct and that the construct is valid [18]. We remember it as a guide for further thought. We also use it to guide our behavior. Ideas that are neatly linked and have a coherent structure are judged to be valid or “true”. The nature of intuition may be understood as the ability to match the structure of a present situation with the structures of problems that have been experienced before. Intuition represents the general ability to reach a conclusion on the basis of less explicit information than is ordinarily required to reach that conclusion [18].

CONCLUSION: SOME GUIDELINES FOR PAVEMENT DESIGNS

Rules for creating a memorable open space can be abstracted from studying historical examples. The lesson from our fractal encoding model is that there exists a fundamental similarity between complex structures in the environment and structures in the mind. Designing an open space can be successful if one follows one’s basic instinct to ornament, connect, and harmonize different levels of design. In principle, therefore, there is really no need for rules if one is guided by one’s deepest feelings. Indeed, one can argue that the closer the match between the architect’s felt intuition about a space and the structure that is finally created as an expression of that intuition, the greater will be the meaning of that space for the observer. In a sense, the built place becomes the vehicle for the mental structure of the architect to be instantiated as a mental structure in the observer.

Nevertheless, some pointers are necessary because of the plethora of negative examples of structures in existence. Even though the best pavements depend on engineering principles, they have to balance and synthesize so many factors that the result should be considered a “work of art”. A successful pavement will have the following characteristics, and satisfy hierarchical linking:

1. Human-scale design to connect immediately with a user.
2. The smallest units defined by contrast and symmetries that allows the units to be detected.
3. A smallest design scale that is compatible with human dimensions — anywhere from 1cm to 1m.
4. Several levels of design before reaching the full extent of the open space.
5. Intermediate levels of design that are distinct yet strongly linked via similarity.
6. Larger levels formed from ordered combinations of elements on smaller scales.
7. Balance among all regions and scales — every element acting as a connector for the other elements.
8. Harmonization at a distance to link all scales with the surrounding buildings.

If these conditions are satisfied, then a user, on entering the environment, will experience a sense of meaningfulness as all of the scales in the view are seen as a unified whole. There is a fractal (i.e., hierarchical) connection to the entire space. The strength of the component connections determines the coherence of the whole. In a poor design, the smallest elements are not symmetric, and appear as amorphous smudges to which we cannot connect. The connection proceeds from the smallest scales to the larger scales, up to the largest scale which is defined by the surrounding structures. While our description of the connection process was sequential, the actual connection through perception is sudden. This experience is frequently dramatic, and creates a definite and sometimes intensely positive psychological and physiological state.

In conclusion, we have proposed a theory of pattern perception that can explain how patterns generate meaning in the environment. Although this theory is entirely general, it was applied here to discuss pavements. A strictly utilitarian approach to pavements requires no sign of any promise of destination or completion that attaches meaning to built forms and spaces. When the environment becomes more complex, the pavement becomes the guarantee that the environment is planned to embody destinations and connections. A pavement that is designed to have meaning ought to obey the eight rules given above. Pavements as a definition of space represent the highest order of mapping between an architectural theme and a theme that the human mind can understand. Meaning in the pavement thus allows one to “know” the place without seeing all of it.

Patterns generate meaning in the environment

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